The Best Night in a Long Time
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As Friday afternoon's warm sunshine peeked between the cracks in the window
blinds and bathed the back of my neck, a not so unusual feeling began to
take over my mind. Slowly at first, then ultimately building into an
overwhelming desire to sneak out of work early, pack up my telescope, and
head out deep into the Everglades for some dark sky viewing. By 4:30 I
could no longer contain myself, so I made up some lame excuse for my early
departure, and off I went. I arrived at my getaway spot just as the sun was disappearing below the sawgrass. By working at a feverish pace, I was completely set up by the time the skies were dark enough to see Polaris. Another well spent 10 minutes tweaking the knobs to insure that I was polar aligned within an arc minute and I was ready. Tonight was to be devoted to imaging alone. The 12" SCT was loaded up with my Starlight XPress MX7C color camera, and the piggyback 120mm refractor was carrying the SBIG STV to serve as a guide scope. After a little experimentation, I settled on 120 seconds as my "standard" exposure time for the evening. I shot 10 sequential images of each object and I took 8 dark frames. First, I imaged the Flame Nebula (NGC2024). Since I really like the Flame, I gave it 15 exposures and 4 darks. Also, during the imaging, I enabled the "learn" mode of the Periodic Error Correction (PEC) on the LX200, so that the act of guiding the scope would actually improve things for rest of the evening. I used the "update" mode twice to refine the PEC a bit. After I polished off the Flame, I went on to NGC2903 and captured 10 exposures. I know that only 20 minutes is not enough time for a dim galaxy, but I wanted to shoot several objects that night, and the background sky was sooo dark. The next item on my list was NGC2403, then the beautiful edge on spiral NGC4565. I then took 4 more darks, followed by a short break with the hair drier in an attempt to ward off the dew monster. I then went to M51, M101, M87, and NGC3628. By then everything was soaking wet with dew and most things were dripping as if it had rained. My long and somewhat shaggy hair was limp and stringy. After another round of de-fogging, I shot images of NGC5128 and NGC5139. The last one didn't turn out very good because things dewed up before the images were complete. As an act of desperation, I removed the focal reducer and shot a sequence of M57, but by then the morning skylight was spoiling the view. I was so tired that it took me a full hour to put everything back into my tiny little car. I finally made it home and to bed by 7AM. This was, without question, the best night I have had with my telescope in well over a year. I will be processing and publishing my photos for several weeks to come. Fred Lehman, March 7, 2003.
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